Can't OC's DAs, Public Defenders and Judges All Just Get Along?

Inside Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg's spacious 10th-floor Santa Ana courtroom on June 20, Richard Raymond Ramirez—a silent, body-chained, convicted killer—sat peacefully, an illusion masking monstrous sensibilities. Though waiting for the penalty phase of his most recent 2013 trial for raping, sodomizing and fatally stabbing a woman 19 times outside a Garden Grove bar in 1983, Ramirez—whose earlier conviction and death row status was overturned by a federal court—disappeared as a factor on this day. Instead, a homicide prosecutor, defense lawyers, the judge and the victim's sisters clashed over the sanctity of Orange County's criminal justice system.

Froeberg is a no-nonsense man known for an often-acerbic persona and occasional, perfectly timed one-liner wit that relaxes juror tensions during stressful trials. Having served on the bench for 29 years and won senior status long ago to handle complex criminal cases, he is a favorite among prosecutors in the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA), where his wife manages the sexual-assault unit. He has made no secret he's in his final months on the bench before retirement and, though never shy, nowadays apparently feels even more freedom to pontificate.

One floor up and directly above Froeberg is the perch of Judge Thomas M. Goethals, who sanctioned ongoing, unprecedented hearings on law enforcement's use of jailhouse informants. When public defender Scott Sanders—who represents Seal Beach salon killer Scott Dekraai—filed a 505-page brief attacking the program in February, prosecutors scoffed. One labeled Sanders' work "vile." Another questioned his decency. But four months of revelations from resistant witnesses prove the local informant system used by OCDA, sheriff's department, police agencies, FBI and Secret Service is horribly broken.

Bob Aul

Details

There's no accountability. There's no meaningful record keeping. One police department labels an informant untrustworthy based on extensive lying while another vouches for the same crook's credibility to win jury convictions. Defense lawyers aren't receiving potential exculpatory evidence because the information is either lost in a bureaucratic wormhole or, according to Sanders, sinisterly hidden—sometimes until after a defendant is convicted—to gain trial advantage. Perhaps worse, government officials have been flagrantly violating pretrial defendants' constitutional, anti-self-incrimination rights by secretly employing lifelong scumbags as their surrogates to make jail inquiries in exchange for benefits, according to defense lawyers.

In mid-May, following the paper trail uncovered by Sanders, public defender investigators interviewed inmate Alexander P. Frosio. The Orange County Jail snitch said he questioned Ramirez for months on behalf of the government, took notes to aid the prosecution and turned the handwritten records over to deputies. Two other inmates, Gordon F. Bridges and Billy J. Fischer, told investigators that Frosio repeatedly tried to entrap Ramirez. The plan, the men claim, was to get Ramirez to accept a stash of heroin and then Frosio would tip deputies for a cell raid, the results of which could help the government undermine mitigating evidence that the defendant had been a model inmate for years.

In the wake of that news, Ramirez public defenders Seth Bank and Mick Hill told Froeberg they wanted a delay in the penalty phase for time to obtain Frosio's missing notes as well as to explore the drug-planting assertions by Bridges and Fischer. Bank considered the developments "disturbing" because "law enforcement was using the informant to try to plant evidence on the defendant, or entice him to commit a crime that would be used against him later in the death penalty trial."

Froeberg wasn't impressed. He rejected Bank's request in late May and declared any questionable conduct by government officials in the use of informants is "irrelevant." He opined that only "the character of the defendant" matters, though Bank argued that unsuccessful efforts to entrap Ramirez directly address character evidence a future jury should know before deciding the death penalty. But Froeberg went a step further. He slammed Goethals by declaring, "This dog-and-pony show is not going to happen in my court."

With that backdrop, let's return to the June 20 Ramirez hearing. The session wasn't Froeberg's idea. He was, he said, acting "under duress" because on June 10 a California Court of Appeal ruling written by Presiding Justice Kathleen E. O'Leary ordered him to entertain Bank's request.

A low-key but persistent Bank demanded a copy of the Frosio informant file and Senior Deputy District Attorney Larry Yellin refused, saying there is no file to turn over and adding that the inmates' assertions weren't credible anyway. Yellin, one of the county's top homicide prosecutors, is livid because he believes the public defender's office has unfairly tarnished his reputation by implying he's hiding evidence.

"The People have not done anything they are alleging," said Yellin, who suggested the defense is merely trying to delay the inevitable. "I'm not giving them what they are asking for . . . [Frosio] is not an informant on Ramirez . . . I don't think they are going to ever answer 'ready' on this case."

Froeberg aligned himself with the prosecutor, sarcastically asking Bank if he wanted "a Dekraai hearing."

The public defender ignored the remark and repeated his demand for the informant file. "Our position is that [Frosio] was a government informant," Bank said. "We just want to see the file for ourselves and see what is there."

Defense lawyers are famous for throwing masses of smelly brown stuff on the wall to see what sticks, especially when they have no legitimate defense. That is their job and the prosecutors know it and should be prepared to deal with it. Criminal informants are dicey at best and Jail House informants are worse. Those guys would give up their mother for a reduction of sentence or a couple of cartons of smokes. In the end, regardless of what did or did not hapen in Orange County Jail, Ramirez is still guilty. If the Justice System worked correctly, he would have already been executed for his crime. Of course here in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia, we just park them on "Death Row" and they live the good life with no regard being given to the many innocent victims left behind. Bottom line here is quit fiddling around with this dirt bag and get him back where he belongs.

Wait a minute here. The DAs office and Froeberg are making a mockery of justice and the integrity of our justice system. The public defenders are exposing it. Why should the PDs get along with scumbags like that?